Here
I am, just hopped on the train from Madras (Chennai) for the 23 hour journey to
Goa. I'm at the end of my crazy two-week train journey around south India, with
only three weeks left in the country.
The
trip (the past two weeks) has been amazing. The two states I visited, Kerala
and Tamil Nadu, were very different but both fascinating.
I
want to take a minute to talk about the food. First of all, both the people of
both states take food very seriously, which I always appreciate. I found I
remarkable that the food could be so drastically different from anything we are
accustomed to in the United States. The Indian food I've seen in the US or in
England is always north Indian food. Here in the south, the typical meal
consist of a starch, like appam (rice pancake) or iddly (a fluffy pillow made
from rice paste) or dhosa (crispy crepe made from potato? Or wheat or rice,
maybe?) or pangol (a grain-maybe amaranth cooked with cashews and spices and
served either sweet or salty) and then a variety of vegetable sauces to dip
your starch into with your fingers (right hand, please. The left is for
cleaning your bottom instead of toilet paper). Then there is also a soupy dal
served as well (usually lentils or some other beans). All this is usually
served on a banana leaf. Especially in Kerala, the food is amazingly spicy. But
I don't mean this in a bad way, as we often do in the west. The food was not
necessarily "hot" but always full of flavour. Kerala is all about
growing spices and trading them with the world, as they have since the time of
King Solomon (hence the origin of Jew Town) and they are very serious about
their spices. There were a few things I didn't like, but mostly all the food
was magical. Sometimes there were things on my plate that were so strong in
flavour that I couldn't tell if I liked them or not. Clearly these things were
meant to be taken just a finger tip at a time with the other foods, not
swallowed all at once. But that's what I mean about the cuisine being so
different that I didn't even always know how to eat it. Sometimes I would look
at the food on the banana leaf of the person at the next table and ask what it
was called so I could order it. Otherwise, I would usually just order a couple
if things blindly (if there was a choice, many places just had you sit down and
they start bringing you food, like thali, further north). But in thali or
northern Indian dishes, like curries, there is usually a main ingredient, like
mixed veg, or peas, or chicken or fish, and then a sauce built around it (curry
or masala, for example). My impression of south Indian food was that spice is
king, and each of the things ladled onto my banana leaf was built around a
particular spice or combination of spices. It was always clear that a lot of
work went into these meals.
Now,
I'll admit that sometimes this food (especially the more rustic versions, shall
we say) does a real number on my delicate American tummy, but I haven't been
sick and for the most part, the parade of flavours has been worth the gastric
inconvenience. The exception, of course has been the train food, which is
obviously mass produced without much care and not very good. The better
alternative has been to stick your head out the train door at a station stop
and buy food from someone on the platform. This is often something fried, like
a vegetable samosa, and often is followed by a stomach ache. Boy, how I wish I
had learned the Tamil words for "Have you changed your cooking oil
recently?"
Often,
when people would stop me and speak to me on the Chennai Metro, for example,
they would ask me if I have tasted their food. I would always say, "Of
course! I love your food!" They always find this very gratifying.
Chennai
can be a challenging place. The drivers, as in all of Tamil Nadu are crazy an
very aggressive, so walking anywhere is treacherous. Also, you are always being
pushed and shoved anywhere you go, often in a rather aggressive way. But I
found that there I a certain flow to the place, and once I found that, it
wasn't so bad. I did walk a lot and I took local trains around the city
(standing room only, usually with someone's elbow in your ear and someone else
leaning on your back) and I found that as pushy and rushed as everyone was, if
you asked a stranger for directions, he would ALWAYS stop and give you
directions. I just don't thing this would be the case in New York. Now,
granted, these directions were not always correct. In fact, I found sometimes
that when someone would direct me to go that way, I would instinctually go the
other way and find what I was looking for. Perhaps there were two possible ways
to go, and they thought I might enjoy the long way...
I
also loved that so many men in chennai wore traditional Indian clothing (lunghis-
made from madras plaid, naturally). It is such a great look. In Kerala, the men
in rural areas all wore lunghis, but in the city, no one did. No one but me,
that is.
P.S.
One of my favorite things about traveling by train in India, is that they provide cum-beds free-of-charge.
These girls looked so great all dressed in identical saris.
How could you not love Lukshmi, the elephant?
नमस्ते
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